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From: Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook] on 26 May 2010 07:52
"spamlet" <spam.morespam(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:OOjMsHE$KHA.4308(a)TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

> Oops, but I'm forgetting, Outlook's 'sent items' isn't really a folder
> either: the only real one being Outlook.pst! Come back Outlook Express, all
> is forgiven!

The Sent Items folder is as real as any other folder in Outlook. The PST is a
database that contains records organized by keys, just like any other database
and Outlook presents those keys as folders. It's as valid a presentation as
WIndows itself uses. The disk metastructures are just a database that allows
the operating system to locate the data on the disk and Windows presents the
database as a set of folder files containing other files, but in reality,
there is no such thing as a file within another file. Folders are just
collections of pointers that indicate where on the disk the data resides.

Outlook 2002/2003 don't do as good of a job with IMAP as Outlook 2007. At
least with Outlook 2007 you don't need a rule to place your outgoing messages
in the server's Sent Items folder . None of those earlier versions does as
good of a job with IMAP as Outlook 2010.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

From: spamlet on 26 May 2010 10:07

"Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]" <tillman1952(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:%238n88nM$KHA.5560(a)TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> "spamlet" <spam.morespam(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in message
> news:OOjMsHE$KHA.4308(a)TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>
>> Oops, but I'm forgetting, Outlook's 'sent items' isn't really a folder
>> either: the only real one being Outlook.pst! Come back Outlook Express,
>> all is forgiven!
>
> The Sent Items folder is as real as any other folder in Outlook. The PST
> is a database that contains records organized by keys, just like any other
> database and Outlook presents those keys as folders. It's as valid a
> presentation as WIndows itself uses. The disk metastructures are just a
> database that allows the operating system to locate the data on the disk
> and Windows presents the database as a set of folder files containing
> other files, but in reality, there is no such thing as a file within
> another file. Folders are just collections of pointers that indicate
> where on the disk the data resides.
>
> Outlook 2002/2003 don't do as good of a job with IMAP as Outlook 2007. At
> least with Outlook 2007 you don't need a rule to place your outgoing
> messages in the server's Sent Items folder . None of those earlier
> versions does as good of a job with IMAP as Outlook 2010.
> --
> Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

Thanks for the extra detail Brian.

Have I got this right: If we upgrade to 2007 (I assume 2010 won't work with
our XPPro SP3):

a) messages sent from Outlook will appear in sent items on both client and
server
b) messages composed and sent from the web interface will appear in sent
items in Outlook as well as on server
c) messages in sent items on server will remain in sent items on server
until *we* decide to move or delete them
d) messages deleted from sent items/inbox on server will *not* disappear
from sent items/inbox on client.

I suspect the last point might be the difficult one, even if the rest are
correct. We would probably still need to transfer sent items to a local
'folder' to be sure of keeping a record.

The 'folderness' of folders on the other hand is semantics that is missing
my point. In your terms: if 'The Sent Items folder is as real as any other
folder in Outlook', then the sent items folder of Outlook Express is an
order of magnitude 'realer' than the one in Outlook. In Outlook, a slight
glitch with ntuser.dat and you lose the lot and have a major recovery
problem. In OE individual dbx 'folders' can be damaged, but I've never had
the catastrophic loss that follows on a simple message that 'Outlook is
rebuilding your profile.' (Yes I have had 'compaction' errors, but the
recovery of relatively small dbxs is a whole lot easier than huge psts!)
Having experienced that once, I personally, would never use it again, and it
is a pain to have to be extra vigilant to see that my partner's Outlook - on
which her livelihood depends - is proofed against any further such losses.
(I still haven't recovered her 2007 'inbox' mail, though, thankfully, Google
Desktop, still 'remembers' it.)

Regards,
S


From: Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook] on 26 May 2010 14:58
"spamlet" <spam.morespam(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:u0d%23VzN$KHA.5044(a)TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

> Have I got this right: If we upgrade to 2007 (I assume 2010 won't work with
> our XPPro SP3):

Outlook 2010 works just fine on WIndows XP Pro.

> a) messages sent from Outlook will appear in sent items on both client and
> server
> b) messages composed and sent from the web interface will appear in sent
> items in Outlook as well as on server
> c) messages in sent items on server will remain in sent items on server
> until *we* decide to move or delete them

This three are true.

> d) messages deleted from sent items/inbox on server will *not* disappear
> from sent items/inbox on client.

This is false. IMAP is a two-way protocol. Whatever happens on the server
gets synched with the client and vice versa at each send/receive. Delete
something in either place and the other will see it gone, albeit with a delay,
usually. Even if you were to connect to the IMAP mailbox from another PC
using, say, Thunderbird as the IMAP client, if you delete something from Sent
Items, Outlook will see it go away at its next send/receive.

> I suspect the last point might be the difficult one, even if the rest are
> correct. We would probably still need to transfer sent items to a local
> 'folder' to be sure of keeping a record.

Yes.

> The 'folderness' of folders on the other hand is semantics that is missing
> my point. In your terms: if 'The Sent Items folder is as real as any other
> folder in Outlook', then the sent items folder of Outlook Express is an
> order of magnitude 'realer' than the one in Outlook.

Hardly. It's just a file named Sent Items.dbx with a pointer to it in
Folder.dbx.

> In Outlook, a slight glitch with ntuser.dat and you lose the lot and have a
> major recovery problem.

Glitches in NTUSER.DAT won't touch anything in a PST. What will happen,
though, is that the association between the PST and the IMAP account will be
broken and it's problematic with an IMAP PST. If you copy the items you don't
wish to lose to a local PST and make periodic backups (simply by copying while
Outlook is closed) of that PST, you're no more likely to lose anything from a
PST than you are a DBX file. Profiles and PSTs are not synonymous.

The loss of an IMAP PST is far less catastrophic than, say, a PST fed by a POP
account. The IMAP server contains the data still, unless you've deleted it,
and you can blow away the PST completely and Outlook will simply rebuild it
when you connect to the mailbox again.

> In OE individual dbx 'folders' can be damaged, but I've never had the
> catastrophic loss that follows on a simple message that 'Outlook is
> rebuilding your profile.' (Yes I have had 'compaction' errors, but the
> recovery of relatively small dbxs is a whole lot easier than huge psts!)
> Having experienced that once, I personally, would never use it again, and it
> is a pain to have to be extra vigilant to see that my partner's Outlook - on
> which her livelihood depends - is proofed against any further such losses.
> (I still haven't recovered her 2007 'inbox' mail, though, thankfully, Google
> Desktop, still 'remembers' it.)

PST files are no more vulnerable that any other type of file, including DBX
files. Backups are your weapon against data loss in all events. If your
partner isn't doing backups, then your partner is saying that his data isn't
important enough to worry about.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

From: Rojo Habe on 26 May 2010 15:51
On 26/05/2010 15:07, spamlet wrote:
>
> Have I got this right: If we upgrade to 2007 (I assume 2010 won't
> work with our XPPro SP3):
>
> a) messages sent from Outlook will appear in sent items on both
> client and server b) messages composed and sent from the web
> interface will appear in sent items in Outlook as well as on server
> c) messages in sent items on server will remain in sent items on
> server until *we* decide to move or delete them d) messages deleted
> from sent items/inbox on server will *not* disappear from sent
> items/inbox on client.
>
> I suspect the last point might be the difficult one, even if the rest
> are correct. We would probably still need to transfer sent items to
> a local 'folder' to be sure of keeping a record.
>

Not quite. As you've surmised, I also have an ntlworld account, and as
far as I can tell you should have no problems unless you're trying to
access your mail from more than one client. If all you have is your
home PC you shouldn't need to make any changes. If, like me, you need
access on more than one device (e.g. laptop, phone, desktop etc) then it
becomes more complicated. You have to decide whether to stick with POP
or change to IMAP. It's actually possible to have both, and use IMAP on
one machine and POP on another, but trust me, you don't want to do this.

If you choose IMAP it's actually best to keep all your mail on the
server. You can create the same folder structure you had within your
Outlook Personal Folders. I found this confusing because whatever
client I used would also try to create its own folders when I set up the
account. So I ended up with a Sent folder as well as a [Gmail]/Sent
Mail folder and different clients would use different folders, plus the
problem I originally started this thread with, which meant my sent mail
ended up in three different places. Provided you catch this early on
and get rid of folders you don't need, you can have ALL your mail on the
server and thus accessible from any device. You can then set Outlook to
auto-archive these folders in the normal fashion so that anything over a
certain age gets saved to a separate .pst file on your home PC.

Or you can use POP on multiple devices. Virgin have introduced what
appears to be a unique feature (as Brian points out, it's not part of
the normal Gmail setup) whereby you add the word "recent:" in front of
your username. Do this on each client and the next time you log onto
the server it'll retrieve all your mail for the last thirty
days(including stuff you've already had); after this initial download,
each client will receive all your mail as independently of the others.
You can for instance receive an email on your laptop and delete it, and
when you get home and check your mail you'll receive it again on that
machine. Once you've deleted (or moved) a message, you won't receive it
again on that device, but you will on a device that hasn't received it
yet. This actually works quite well after the initial deluge of mail,
and deals with everything other than the sent mail problem. My solution
was to treat my home PC as the master, on which I need a record of
everything, and sacrifice the ability to see all my sent mails on the
laptop or phone (I don't want them clogging up my phone anyway). My
phone has a "send to self" option, which is essentially a BCC to my own
email address. On my laptop I use Thunderbird, which also has an option
to BCC everything to myself. From the Webmail intercace I can't see a
way of automating it btu just click "Add Bcc" and put your own email
address in he box that appears. All of this does mean that on the
laptop and phone I receive a copy of everything I send but I just delete
them. On my machine at home running Outlook 2007 I have an Inbox rule
set to move anything from myself into the Sent Items folder and mark it
as read. You could also set up a rule in Outlook to BCC yourself and
then have them moved into the sent items on the mobile devices too, but
then you'd have messages from yourself which the inbox rule would
automatically move to Sent Items, creating a duplicate.

That's a lot of waffle, especially if you don't have multiple clients,
in which case you didn't need to read past the first paragraph. To
quickly answer your points in turn:

a) No. Depending how you have it set up, they'll either go to the
server-side Sent folder or the local Sent Items folder. This can be
manipulated within Outlook using rules
b) No. Only the server. If you set Outlook up using IMAP you'll have
access to this folder from within Outlook.
c) As far as I know, this is the case. Only items marked for deletion
or moved to the [Gmail]/Bin folder will be deleted. Makes no difference
which version of Outlook you're using.
d) This seems to be the case for me. Again, depends whether you're POP
or IMAP as to what we're actually talking about. If you're set up as
IMAP you'll have local and server-side versions of these folders and
will have to get your head around which is which.

From: Rojo Habe on 26 May 2010 16:00
On 24/05/2010 14:30, Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook] wrote:
> "Rojo Habe" <noem(a)iladdress.com> wrote in message
> news:O80pldF%23KHA.5164(a)TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>
>> Yeah, they've "enhanced" the POP interface, too, which means you have
>> to put the word "recent:" in front of your username and then it'll
>> download the last thirty days worth (the first time you do it) onto
>> each client. The messages stay on the server regardless of whether or
>> not you configure your client to delete them.
>
> This is really not in conformance with POP standards and it's not how
> gmail POP works for me. There should be an option in the POP setup that
> allows you to have the server work in a more standard fashion. I know I
> don't have to add "recent". Log into gmail via a web browser, click
> Settings, then "Forward and POP/IMAP". You should be able to click a
> radio button labeled "Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already
> been downloaded)" and it will allow you to download all mail in the
> Inbox. You should also make sure the "When messages are accessed via
> POP" drop-down says "keep Gmail's copy in the Inbox".
>

Hi Brian

Thanks once again for your advice. Although Virgin Media are now using
Gmail as their email service I can't actually log in at Gmail.com; I
still have to log onto viginmedia.com and it's evident there are subtle
differences in their implementation. The settings you mentioned are
avialble, however, and are enabled by default. For some reason
appending "recent:" to the user name does seem necessary for proper
operation otherwise things seem to vanish after you've read them and
logged out (on any particular client). This seems unique to Virgin
Media but once you get the hang of it...

Anyway, I'm pretty much sorted now, thanks (using POP3). For more
details see my reply to spamlet's post.
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